The present invention relates to a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) which stores image data, produced by diagnosis apparatuses, into a plurality of data management devices (hereinafter referred to as "data bases") and administers the image data stored therein.
General hospital has a section for diagnosis, where a clinician performs a diagnosis of a patient, and a department for examination, where a specialist or a medical technician examines a patient by use of examination equipment. The internal medicine section, the surgery section, and the otolaryngology section are examples of the former type section, while the radiology department is an example of the latter. When performing a diagnosis, the clinician may sometimes judge that a diagnostic image of a patient is necessary for an accurate diagnosis to be arrived at. In such a case, the clinician fills in an examination request form, and asks the patient to proceed to, for example, the radiology department, (e.g., radiology department) for X-ray examination. In this examination (radiology) department, an X-ray examination is performed to the patient in accordance with the clinician's requests. Following the X-ray examination, the resultant X-ray image is returned to the clinician, together with the examination request form, and usually with the diagnostic reports of the image.
Recently, a synthetic diagnostic judgment system such as PACS has been developed, wherein the above examination procedures are controlled by computer. According to this system, image data, which is produced by various types of examination devices (also referred to as modalities), is transmitted to a data base. A terminal station is provided for each examination device, and codes used for identifying the image data (ID code) and codes representing the related diagnosis sections are entered from the terminal station at the same time as the image data is transmitted. These codes are supplied also sent to the data base, together with the image data. At the data base, therefore, image data is recorded and administered each time it is sent from the examination devices.
However, the above system may be faced with a problem, particularly if it includes a plurality of data bases. Assume that a wrong code is mistakenly entered from a terminal station to the system. In this case, the image data will be sent to and stored in an inappropriate data base. The occurrence of such a mistake cannot be detected in the above system.
In the above system, image data is stored in a data base, in response to a command supplied from an examination device. In other words, the storing of the image data into the data base is performed under the control of the examination device on the terminal. Therefore, the data base cannot identify the type of the image data until it actually receives the image data. Since all image data supplied from the examination device is recorded in the data base, it is probable that image data will be undesirably stored in the data base. In addition, even if the data base is not supplied with image data which it should receive, the data base cannot recognize the occurrence of this situation.